Main menu

Russia establishes North-Caucasian Federal District

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has established a new federal district in Muslim-dominated North Caucasus. The President appointed Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin, governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk and former board chairman of Norilsk Nickel, to head the North-Caucasian Federal District. The new federal district comprises Russia’s volatile republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia, as well as the Stavropol region, with the administrative centre in Pyatigorsk.

Post navigation

President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to create or more precisely to restore a North Caucasus Federal District appears likely to backfire on its author. This is not the first attempt by a Russian state to create a "North Caucasus kray." None of those efforts was satisfactory to the center. The latest one is likely to meet the same fate because of the consequences it will have in the North Caucasus itself.

Yulia Latynina points out in Yezhednevny Zhurnal today that this move shows that Moscow does not administer the Caucasus, neither on federal nor on republican level. "What is the deeply ill system doing now?" she asks. "The answer is very simple: it is simulating administration." This new arrangement is intended not only to reduce the amount of violence but also to rein in Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.